


Even In Death

by CuddleFuddle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, M/M, Noncanonical Character Death, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuddleFuddle/pseuds/CuddleFuddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: </p>
<p>"Slight AU, Nepeta hesitates too long to attack Gamzee from her hiding spot, and ends up living.</p>
<p>After a long deliberation, she makes the decision to kill Karkat in order to take revenge on Gamzee. A moirail for a moirail. Killing Karkat is a psychological nightmare for her since Katnep is her OTP, and obviously it won't be an easy decision for her.</p>
<p>I just really want to have a good cry."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even In Death

Even with inches of solid metal door between you, you can hear the precise moment when Equius leaves the room. You know the beat of his footsteps off by heart, and besides, he’s always stepped a little _stronger_ than other trolls. You hear the way he closes the door softly (though you know the handle is probably bent regardless), hear the way the silence closes in, filling the void he’s left behind.

If you were anyone else, you might panic. But you’re six sweeps old and a _purrficient_ hunter, and besides, panicking is for wrigglers.

So you wait.

You’re familiar with this part of the meteor. It’s your hive away from hive; that’s the way you choose to look at it, anyways. Some of your friends seem to grumble about it – the cold metal walls, the bright fluorescent lighting, the shiny-hardness of it all. But it kind of reminds you of home – if home was a little brighter and a little colder. You set to work on making it as much like your hive as you possibly could, including your shipping walls, a pile (for feelings jams, should the need arise), a collection of some of your old hunting trophies, and of course, your tablet.

You’re not sure what to expect, but you know that everything will turn out okay. You can just feel it! You’re not sure what Karkat said to Equius, but you just can’t believe that Gamzee of all people could possibly be dangerous. You’ve always worried about him – in private, to Equius – being culled for being too nice, too out of it. You can’t imagine him killing anyone, and once upon a time, that used to worry you.

Now it brings you a swift sensation of relief. You only wish that someone had thought to alchemize some more sopor for Gamzee. He’s probably missing it (even though he shouldn’t be eating it at all). Maybe you will, once all of this has blown over.

You fidget restlessly. As a _furroicious_ hunter you should have gone with Equius. Someone needs to watch his back. You don’t think he’s ever killed _any_ trolls, other than the robot ones he makes, and while you haven’t had a lot of practice killing trolls either, at least you know kind of what to expect.

(You refuse to dwell on that one time you killed a troll’s lusus by mistake. You were only three sweeps old; he, a little younger, and he’d flung himself at you, howling with rage. You had to kill him, of course, and the way his brown-red blood stuck to your claws like rust had shaken you for almost a whole week after.)

So you go creeping – _purrowling_ – through the air vents.

The way the metal bumps your knees and the coldness against your hands makes you nervous. Your hair prickles along your nape. You feel like you really are prowling, like you’re on the hunt for something vicious. You play with your strife specibus, setting it and resetting it, liking the feel of the gloves on your hands, hating the sound of metal scraping metal.

You peer out the first grate, and you see –

well

you’re not really sure.

Littered across the floor are some of Terezi’s scalemates, and a jousting lance. And on the wall is a message scrawled in Alternian, in a brown colour that makes you _purrsitively envious_! You’d _kill_ to have ink in such a nice rich chocolatey brown. If only you were still on Alternia. You’d go hunting for brownbloods in an instant.

You have to squint to read it. Whoever wrote it has messy handwriting.

_HONK_

You… have no idea what’s going on here.

The grate itself marks a dead end anyways. You scamper backwards, hands skittering against the metal. In the darkness you can see a path branching out to the left. You take it.

The second grate looks down on another room – or is the same room? You’re not quite sure. The distance you’ve travelled feels short, but the meteor is a mysterious place after all! There’s another message scrawled messily on the walls, but this time it makes the hair stand on the back of your neck.

_Are you next? :o)_

It’s written in the same chocolatey brown ink, and there are smears of it on the floor and for a moment you’re briefly reminded of Tavros and you don’t even know why you would think that stupid stupid and –

You stop. Take a breath. You slowly back away, feeling just a little _claustrofurrbic_. Obviously it’s some kind of joke. Gamzee loves jokes, and you do ship him and Tavros after all! Maybe it’s just part of some kind of game between those two. Yeah. A game.

You continue on your path until you reach another dead end. Gosh darnit! You grope along the wall, feeling for some kind of path – you don’t really want to turn back now – and nearly fall on your face. It’s a path all right, with a ceiling that stoops lower than you’re used to, but a path is a path and you wriggle along on your belly like a stupid grub until you find the next grate.

This one is loose, and after peeking through it, you remove it and drop down onto the floor below. Your feet hurt a little, but otherwise, you’re fine. It feels good to stretch again.

This room is small, and dimly lit. Near to you seems to be a transportalizer but alas, it’s broken. On the floor is…

You bend to inspect the liquid. It’s dried slightly, and somewhat crusted. You’re not really sure _what_ it is. It’s too bright to be any blood colour you’ve seen (the thought makes your heart slow and your head clear). It must be some kind of paint.

If Gamzee’s been tapping into your paint reserves, you’re going to be so mad!!!

It takes some effort, but there – just behind the second transportalizer (also broken) is another grate. You wriggle through.

This time the path is a straight shot forward into darkness; you would know, what with it being so narrow you can barely fit inside, your sides scraping along the walls as you crawl slowly forward. No secret twists and turns here, just one last grate…

From your vantage point, you can only see Equius at first. And even with your hunter’s keen ears, you have to struggle to hear the conversation.

You hear Equius, stammering – we really should talk, what was that, the volume of your voice keeps fluctuating and then you hear Gamzee and his voice makes you shake and then there’s an arrow through Equius’ knee and Gamzee is there and you’re shaking and shaking and you’ve got your claws out and if you push aside the grate maybe you can save him but you don’t all you do is watch and shake and shake and shake.

You watch as your moirail falls to the floor, bowstring taut around his neck, glasses askew, eyes wide and bulging. You watch as Gamzee picks up the glasses and you feel rage rush through you, hot and boiling like you’ve never felt it before.

You _hate_ him. You hate him so much.

He smiles down at Equius, eyes half-lidded, and then he’s changing his strife specibus and it’s some kind of blade (not one of Karkat’s, you think distantly, because it’s not a sickle) and you watch, trembling with rage and fear, as Gamzee decapitates the corpse of your best friend. You watch as the blood rushes out, probably still cold, covering Gamzee’s hands and the blade and Equius’ shirt. You have to fight back the urge to cry.

The stench of it is overwhelming, and you are suddenly reminded of a time when you were hunting and you killed a musclebeast – before you met Equius and promised not to do so. The blood was blue, though not as rich as Equius’s, and you had been so young, you remember playing with it, smearing it along the grass and the trees, marvelling at how much colder it was than your blood, liking the way that it felt thick and sticky between your hands. Now you think of Equius, imagine the remembered sensation as being his blood, and it’s all you can do not to throw up.

You wait patiently instead, not even noticing that you’ve started crying, pale green stains down your face and onto your shirt. You wait as patiently as you’ve ever waited, as you wish you’d waited in your makeshift hive. You wait until you’re sure Gamzee is gone – with the head, much to your dismay – and you gently reposition the grate, slip out of it, and land on the floor beside your moirail.

His blood is mostly dried by now, and despite the coolness of the meteor, it has warmed to temperature that is probably closer to your blood. It’s mostly dry, coagulating on the floor, but when you touch of it, some of it sticks to your fingers.

You want to bury your face into his chest and cry. You want to cry like a little wriggler until you can’t cry any more.

Instead, you follow Gamzee’s footsteps.

Fortunately for you – though it seems kind of morbid in retrospect, to be glad about something like this – Gamzee had stood in Equius’s blood. Whether on purpose to taunt you into following him, or by accident, you’re not sure.

You follow the blue smears softly and quietly, and on the way, you think of revenge.

You’ll have to kill Gamzee, naturally. The question is how?

You don’t want to admit it, but you’re scared of him. You didn’t think that Gamzee had had any practice with killing; you didn’t think Gamzee would ever be able to kill, let alone kill with such ruthless efficiency. He wields more than one strife specibus with ease, whereas you’ve only mastered your own. He isn’t perturbed by the thought of killing trolls that he once knew – it feels like sweeps and sweeps ago when you would have been glad to hear of Gamzee killing. Now you just feel blank.

Then a wave of sorrow hits you so hard, that you crouch to your knees with the weight of it. It’s not just that Gamzee has killed one of your friends (although now you wonder if he’s killed more of them). He’s killed _Equius._

You’d never had such a palecrush on anyone before, not until you met Equius. You’d both been barely two sweeps old, facing your first sweep as a _troll_ and not as a wriggler. When you’d received your husktop, it had been preprogrammed with Trollian and you’d been cycling through the list of names, until he’d messaged you. You can’t remember your handle then, and you can’t remember his, but he’d been the first to message you, and that was that.

You remember practicing your quirks together, and you remember getting into fights so bad that sometimes you thought you _hated_ him. By the time you’d pruned your Trollian list to just twelve people, you were nearly three sweeps old, and you’d never felt any paler towards anyone. You knew you never would, either.

Now he’s dead, and you’re remembering stuttering out over Trollian that you kind of wanted to try being meowrails if that’s okay (dressing it up in puns because you were so terrified of saying the word) and Equius asking why and you felt your heart might break.

Because I trust you more than anyone else, you’d said, and besides, you need someone to keep you in line.

Okay, he’d said. If I must confess, I’ve been harboring feelings of a pale sort as well, he said, I just wanted to be sure that you were making this decision for honorable reasons, he’d said, and you laughed and called him a goshdarned sillyface and you’d never felt happier.

Now he’s dead, and you’re stalking his killer.

The footprints faded almost as soon as you reached the foot of a long, spiralling staircase. You had a feeling that it would lead to the roof, and although you’re not sure what Gamzee would be doing on the roof, but you figure it’s a suitable place as any for a showdown.

What you’re not expecting is to find all your friends – Kanaya wearing something that’s stained in what you suspect is blood, Sollux looking all beaten up and bloodied as well, Terezi wearing her FLARPing outfit that you haven’t seen in sweeps, and Karkat…

You watch as Karkat calms Gamzee and your guts twist with something bitter.

_Kill Karkat_ , a part of you whispers. _It’s not fair. No one would ever stand it. Why should you?_

No one’s expecting you to be there. When you catch Kanaya’s eye, you swear she’s looking at you with something akin to pity. You’re not interested. And Terezi, she sniffs, and she asks if you’re alright, and you say, no, not really, but I will be. That’s only half a lie.

Can you kill Karkat? You’re not sure. You’ve never thought of killing a friend before, never even really actively thought of killing another _troll_. You’ve fantasized about it, sure, wondered about it the way all pre-pubescent trolls do. And of course there was that accident with the rust-blood. But you’ve never really planned to do it, not until now anyways.

When you think of Karkat your heart stutters with pity. He’s always seemed pitiful; smaller than the other trolls, with nubby horns and though he’s never confirmed it, you _know_ there’s something wrong with his blood. Everyone knows. Why else would he hide behind grey? Either he’s really low – lower than Aradia even, or else maybe he really is a limeblood, like Equius had thought. Either way, he’s always been deserving of pity, and you’ve always wanted to give him yours.

Now as you stand there, he looks at you in a way that makes your face flush green. You’d always thought you’d do anything to have him look at you with such unabashed redness. But now it just makes you feel sick.

So you turn your back on him, though it hurts, and you say that you’re going to be in your hive -room, and you leave.

And you plan.

By all accounts, you’d be in the right. To kill Karkat. It wouldn’t even really be a crime. The question is, whether or not you have the guts to kill the guy you’ve had the biggest flushcrush on since… well, since forever.

And then you remember Equius, and the look on his face when he’d told you goodbye and the way Gamzee had cut his head straight off in one blow and the blood and you bite your lip so hard that you can taste the metallic tang of blood.

It’s not a matter of whether or not you will or not. It’s a matter of _when_.

You want to do it now. You want to do it now, up on the roof, in front of Kanaya and Terezi and Sollux and anyone else who might happen to be around. You want to plunge your claws through Karkat’s chest while Gamzee still has his arms around him. You want to brutalize his corpse the way Gamzee did Equius’s. You want to kiss him the way you’ve always wanted to and say you’re sorry and only then will you have some peace.

*

It’s almost a whole perigee later before you actually get your chance.

You’ve never stopped thinking about it. Never, not even when the humans showed up, not even when Karkat took to sulking over Terezi in ways that were adorable pitiful. You only make your move when you do because you’ve started to see less and less of Gamzee lately and you want to make sure that you do it before he disappears. You want him to suffer the way you did.

So you go Karkat-hunting.

You know his favourite haunts. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is when you enter his room and there he is, and he turns around like, what the fuck are you doing Nepeta, and you just smile at him with what you think is kind of a sad smile.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and your heart quivers. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah,” you say. “There kind of is,” you say, and his face falls.

“I know things have been hard without Equius,” he says finally, and the words are halting like he’s choking them out. “But if you need anything –”

You smile again.

“Karkat,” you say and you take a step closer, surprised at how calm your voice is. He stands stiller than you’ve ever seen him, eyes wide. You take another step, and then another, until you’re close enough to touch him.

You wonder if this is what it’s like to have proper black feelings for anyone. You’ve never really had them for anyone, not really. You hate Gamzee, but you _hate_ Karkat, you think. For forgiving Gamzee. For ignoring you. You hate him and you pity him at the same time and it’s all a big mix that hurts your chest  and makes your eyes bright with green tears. You want to kiss him. You want to kill him.

The first touch of his lips against yours makes you shiver. You’d never have thought yourself brave enough to do so, but then, things have changed a lot since Equius’s death.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Karkat half-shouts, and you say, “I’m sorry,” and then your gloves are on (you’ve been practicing drawing them fast for the past perigee, standing in your room staring at the drawing you did of him and steeling up your nerve).

“What the fuck,” he says again, then, “Nepeta don-” and then your claws are buried knuckle deep into him and he’s gasping and just kind of looking at you and you twist your hand the way you used to do back on Alternia. That way the claws can shred the guts of whatever animal you’re killing. In this case, it’s Karkat.

His blood on your hands is bright, bright cherry red, like you’ve never seen in a troll before, and it surprises you. Your claws are buried deep right between where the ribs separate and stretch and you know if you twist them enough to the side you can puncture his lungs. You know because you’ve been studying. And so you do.

You do and he makes this gasping-gurgling sound and he’s looking at you with eyes that are pleading and his mouth quietly shapes the word _why_ and so you remove your claws very, very slowly, and you answer.

“A moirail for a moirail,” you say, and you feel a wetness on your face. You weren’t expecting to cry. But you are.

Because whether or not you hate him or you pity him, he’s your friend and he always has been, even though he’s a jerk sometimes, and you’ll miss him.

But not as much as you miss Equius.

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of messy and it's also been a long time since I wrote fic (or anything really) so there's bound to be some mistakes. Feel free to offer concrit, I'd really appreciate it. This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are my own. Lastly, I wasn't sure if midblood Nepeta would use more scientific terms for troll anatomy or not. I figure it flows better with regular terminology, whether or not it's canon.


End file.
